Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Rudolph “Rudy” Van Gelder was born on November 2, 1924 in Jersey City, New Jersey. His interest in microphones and electronics can be traced to a youthful enthusiasm for amateur radio. Named for his uncle who had been the drummer in Ted Lewis’s band in the mid-1930s, he took trumpet lessons and trained as an optometrist at the Pennsylvania College of Optometry, in Philadelphia, thinking he could not earn a living as a recording engineer.
From 1943, after graduating, Van Gelder had an optometry practice in Teaneck, New Jersey, and moonlighted recording local musicians in the evenings who wanted 78-rpm recordings of their work. From 1946, Van Gelder recorded in his parents’ house in Hackensack, New Jersey, in which a control room was built adjacent to the living room, which served as the musicians’ performing area. The dry acoustics of this working space were partly responsible for Van Gelder’s inimitable recording aesthetic.
Interested in improving the quality of the playback equipment he acquired everything that could play back audio: speakers, turntables and amplifiers. One of Rudy’s friends, baritone saxophonist Gil Mellé, introduced him to Alfred Lion, a producer for Blue Note Records, in 1953. Within a few years he was in demand by many other independent labels based around New York City, such as Bob Weinstock, owner of Prestige Records. To accommodate each label – Blue Note, Prestige, Savoy, Impulse, Verve he assigned them to different days as Lion was more stringent with the sound of original music, Weinstock had essentially blowing sessions for some of the best musicians in jazz history.He also engineered and mastered for the classical label Vox Records in the Fifties.
Van Gelder worked during the day as an optometrist until the summer of 1959, when he moved his operations to a larger studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey and became a full-time recording engineer. The new studio’s design was inspired by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright had high ceilings and fine acoustics with “no food or drink and do not touch microphones” policy as he himself always wore gloves when handling equipment.
By 1967 the labels were beginning to utilize other engineers more regularly but Rudy remained active engineering nearly all of Creed Taylor’s CTI Records releases, a series of proto-smooth jazz albums that were financially successful, but not always well received by critics. He was not without his detractors. Despite his prominence in the industry, like Lion who didn’t care for the overuse of reverb, and Charles Mingus refused to work with him because he change the sound of his bass. He remastered the analog Blue Note recordings into 24-bit digital recordings in its RVG Edition series and also remasters of some of the Prestige albums, and was happy to see the LP go by the wayside because it was hard for him to get the sound the way he thought it should be.
He received awards and honors being named a fellow of the Audio Engineering Society (AES), received the society’s most prestigious award, the AES Gold Medal, named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts, received the Grammy Trustees Award, and Thelonious Monk composed and recorded a tribute to Van Gelder titled Hackensack.
Producer and recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder, who specialized in jazz and regarded as the most important recording engineer of jazz by some observers, passed away at home in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey on August 25, 2016. Among the several thousand jazz sessions he recorded are the acknowledged classics John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, Miles Davis’s Walkin’, Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage, Sonny Rollins’s Saxophone Colossus and Horace Silver’s Song for My Father.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Antonio Sánchez was born on November 1, 1971 in Mexico City, Mexico and started playing drums at the age of five. By his teen years he had begun playing professionally. Attaining a degree in classical piano from the National Conservatory in 1993, he moved to Boston, Massachusetts, to study at Berklee College of Music. After a Magna Cum Laude graduation in Jazz Studies, he obtained a scholarship for a Masters in Jazz Improvisation at Boston’s New England Conservatory.
While still at the Conservatory in 1997, his teacher, Danilo Pérez, recommended Sánchez to Paquito D’Rivera for the drum chair in Dizzy Gillespie’s United Nations Orchestra, leading him to him touring with the orchestra. In 1997 Perez invited him to be a part of his acoustic trio, extensive touring, and the recording of the Grammy-nominated album Motherland. Post tour he joined Pat Metheny Group as the drummer after a series of auditions.
The group recorded two albums with Antonio the 2003 Grammy Award winning Speaking of Now, for Best Contemporary Jazz Album and in 2005 The Way Up. The Pat Metheny Trio, he and Metheny are joined by bassist Christian McBride on the recording Day Trip in 2008 and in 2012 he was the drummer on Pat Metheny’s album Unity Band.
In 2007 he recorded his debut solo album as a leader, Migration, with Metheny, Chick Corea, Chris Potter, David Sanchez, and Scott Colley. With his sophomore release, Live in New York, in 2010 Sánchez recorde the double live album at the Jazz Standard in New York after a US tour of Antonio’s band which included Miguel Zenon on alto saxophone, David Sanchez on tenor and Scott Colley on acoustic bass.
In 2013 he release of his third album New Life, and in 2014 Sánchez composed the music for the film Birdman, garnering for the soundtrack a nomination for 2014 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, a nomination for the 2015 British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA), but was disqualified to compete in the Academy Award for Best Original Score, because the film also contained a significant amount of classical music.
Drummer Antonio Sanchez has performed and recorded with Avishai Cohen, Alexei Tsiganov, Misha Tsiganov, Michael Brecker, Gary Burton, Chick Corea, Bendik Hofseth, Enrico Pieranunzi, Dewa Budjana, David Binney, Donny McCaslin, John Escreet and Matt Brewer among others, and continues to perform, record, tour and compose.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Walter Bell was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on October 31, 1959 and is a self taught flutist and jazz historian. He moved to Richmond, Virginia to hone his craft and it was after this period of years that he rose to national prominence before moving back home. He is not one to double on saxophone, but stays true to his instrument having mastered the entire family of flutes from bass to piccolo. Carrying on the tradition of Herbie Mann, Hubert Laws, Yusef Lateef and Rhasaan Roland Kirk he focuses on jazz and Latin for his repertoire.
The founder and co owner of his own small label, Reika Records, Bell has released nine projects thus far. He performs nationally, has over 30 players that he rotates through his group, the Latin Jazz Unit. An in demand performer, he continually festivals, college & club dates and private receptions.
Flautist Walter Bell continues to perform and record, is the host a bi-monthly radio show on Washington D.C.’s WPFW Pacifica 89.3, performs a Sunday jazz brunch Hibachi in Philadelphia and still has time to produce and score TV themes for New Millenium studios with actor Tim Reid in Virginia.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jimmy Woods was born on October 29, 1934 in St. Louis, Missouri. Woods began playing saxophone with Homer Carter’s R&B band in 1951, then served in the Air Force from 1952 to 1956. After being discharged honorably he played with Roy Milton and was with Horace Tapscott and Joe Gordon in the start of the Sixties. Following this he played and recorded two albums with Gerald Wilson and two with Chico Hamilton to the middle of the decade.
in the early 1960s Woods recorded two albums, Awakening and Conflict, both released on Contemporary Records. The second of these albums, Conflict, featured Elvin Jones, Harold Land, Carmell Jones, Andrew Hill, and George Tucker. During the decade he also performed and recorded with Teddy Edwards and Joe Gordon
Since the end of the Sixties not much has been heard from jazz alto saxophonist Jimmy Woods.
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Jesse Drakes was born October 22, 1924 in New York City. He hung out at Minton’s Playhouse in his youth and attended Juilliard in the 1940s. In the 1940s he played with Al Cooper’s Savoy Sultans, Sid Catlett, J.C. Heard, Edie Heywood, Deke Watson, and Sarah Vaughan. He worked extensively with Lester Young, the pair collaborated on and off between 1948 and 1956.
During this period Drakes played with Harry Belafonte, Gene Ammons, Sonny Stitt, Louie Bellson and Duke Ellington. By the late 1950s he was playing less jazz and more R&B music, touring with King Curtis and playing at the Motown studios in the 1960s. From 1969 he was based out of New York, leading dance ensembles and singing.
Trumpeter Jesse Drakes, who never recorded as a leader, was found dead in his apartment in New York City on May 1, 2010, so his actual date of death is therefore unknown.
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